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Words cannot express the gratitude of the patients we serve or the pleasure we feel extending our services to the underprivileged. I thank Aloha Medical Mission for making these missions possible.

Dennis Yeomans, D.D.S.

The medical-surgical teams sent to the developing countries of Asia and the Pacific are a cornerstone of Aloha Medical Mission’s activities. The first missions occurred in the early 1970s, when Dr. Ernesto Espaldon, a plastic surgeon from the Philippines then living in Guam, and his anesthesiologist wife returned to his hometown of Tawi Tawi in Mindanao to fix the cleft lips of children. The Aloha Medical Mission was formed when Hawai‘i physicians teamed with Dr. Espaldon in 1983 to assist him in his efforts. Read More…

Medical-focused missions tend to be staffed by family practitioners, internists, ER physicians, dermatologists and pediatricians.

Surgical-focused missions are dependent upon the availability of the specialties. Most missions have general and plastic surgeons as the core group. Anesthesiologists are key members of the team and are often in short supply. Gynecologists, ENTs, and ophthalmologists are extremely useful but are difficult to recruit. Dentists are also in great demand.

Mission sites are generally in small rural towns where the population is most frequently medically underserved.

What types of surgeries are performed?

Our general surgeons will commonly do inguinal and abdominal hernias, thyroidectomies, (open) cholecystectomies, breast, ano-rectal, and simple head & neck (branchial cleft and thyroglossal duct cysts) surgeries, circumcisions, amputations, and a variety of soft tissue masses (lipomas, sebaceous cysts, neurofibromas). Laparoscopic equipment is rarely, if at all, available in the facilities where we work.